Want to listen to documents on-the-go with your MP3 player? The Apple Phone Show weblog provides step-by-step instructions for converting text to speech for both Mac and Windows users. On the Mac, the process involves setting up a simple Automator workflow; on Windows, the post suggests a shareware program called TextAloud2. The Automator solution is workable, but nobody likes shareware if they can help it, so for a free Windows alternative, you have a few potential options.

AT&T's text-to-speech demo (which has been around forever) lets you download audio files as WAVs and has several actually listenable voices, but it has a 300 character limit, so that's not great. You could print the document as a PDF and use Adobe Reader's Read Out Loud feature while recording your audio output with Audacity. One reader has suggested several other Windows alternatives, though none seem altogether perfect. If you have a text-to-speech solution that's worked well for you on Windows and it's (preferably) free, let's hear about it in the comments.